Dolce & Gabbana / Spring 2012 RTW

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Sometimes the thought occurs that what many long-established designers miss is the degree to which women really like—or even actively love—when they just relax and do what they do best. Of course, it helps if said designers have firmly defined a part of the psychic territory of fashion as their own, as Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana did years ago. Take this simple test to prove it: Close your eyes, think about Dolce & Gabbana, and what comes to mind? Sophia Loren, Italian summers in the fifties, boundless womanly sensuality, and a huge, optimistic appetite for life. Of course!

Well, that’s exactly what came to pass—in all its exuberant southern Italian variety—on their runway for spring. Loren was singing “Mambo Italiano” on the sound track and the girls were switching their hips in sexy fifties corseted dresses and swimsuits printed with a cornucopia of market-vegetable patterns.

Let it be said, there is something about a bra top, a fluttery circle skirt, and a curve-hugging lace dress that will bring out involuntary hip-switching in even the most serious-faced of young models. For 20 minutes, they got to taste what it must have been like for Linda, Christy, Cindy, and Naomi when they first inhabited that Dolce & Gabbana hotness almost a generation ago. And the audience got to experience how the brand’s lush celebration of femininity is just as relevant today.

Fashion-wise, this was a smart piece of timing in a season when the best collections in Italy have been all about individual voices. They hit current notes of the season—3-D lace, bejeweled embroidery, and all those colorful prints. But aside from the spectacle produced by the crazy, celebratory finale of the models in showgirl corsets, the biggest pleasure was just seeing these designers being so confidently themselves.